– Photo essay by Giovanna Silva, from her series Veritas (on Venice), 2022
In the early morning hours, architect, photographer, and artist Giovanna Silva documents an often unnoticed reality of the city of Venice. The usually prevalent depictions of the lagoonal city with its prestigious memorials, monuments, canals, bridges, and squares give way to an unglamorous image of Venice focusing on the infrastructure of its daily maintenance: storage facilities and utility rooms, access corridors and transit spaces, construction sites and barriers. Due to its particular location, surrounded by water, the city not only requires special care, but also demands different tools, media, speeds, as well as extraordinary bodily effort for its maintenance and preservation. Goods and waste have to be transported, squares and canals cleaned, facades and flooded floors repaired. Silva’s images draw attention to this necessary everyday work and all the craftspeople and construction workers, handlers, and cleaning personnel who keep the city alive. FG
